As 5G barely makes its way out of the door into the hands of users, Samsung has announced its vision for the next generation communication system, 6G, highlighting technical and societal trends, new services, requirements, candidate technologies and a timeline of standardisation and 6G adoption.
Samsung Research, the ‘advanced’ R&D hub within Samsung Electronics’ SET Businesses aims to accelerate research of 6G, as Sunghyun Choi, head of the advanced communications research centre, Samsung, explained: “While 5G commercialisation is still in its initial stage, it’s never too early to start preparing for 6G because it typically takes around 10 years from the start of research to commercialisation of a new generation of communications technology,
“We’ve already launched the research and development of 6G technologies by building upon the experience and ability we have accumulated from working on multiple generations of communications technology, including 5G. Going forward, we are committed to leading the standardisation of 6G in collaboration with various stakeholders across industry, academia and government fields.”
In a white paper, Samsung predicts that the 6G standard could be ready for early commercialisation in 2028, with mass commercialisation expected to occur around 2030, citing both humans and machines as the main users of 6G.
The company expects that 6G will be characterised by use of advanced services such as next-generation immersive XR as well as high-fidelity mobile holograms and digital replicas.
Samsung highlights three areas of requirements that need to be met to achieve 6G services: Citing performance, architecture and trustworthiness as central pillars of the new technology with a peak data rate of 1,000 Gbps and air latency less than 100 microseconds, 50 times faster than the current peak data rate and one-tenth the latency of 5G.
The architectural requirements for 6G will include resolving issues surrounding limited computation capability of mobile devices and including the implementation of AI from the initial phase of technology development, enabling the flexible integration of new network entities. Trustworthiness is also seen as a key requirement, addressing the security and privacy issues arising from the growing use of user data and AI technologies.
To satisfy the requirements of 6G, Samsung suggests the introduction of ‘candidate technologies’ such as the use of the terahertz frequency band, novel antenna technologies to increase the coverage of high frequency band signals, advanced duplex technologies, the evolution of network topology, spectrum sharing and the use of AI in wireless communications.